Undead in the West II: They Just Keep Coming (Publication)

The frontier has long been framed as a landscape of life and death, but few scholarly works have ventured into the realm where the two become one, to explore portrayals of the Undead in the West – the zombies, vampires, mummies, and others that have lumbered, crept, shambled, and swooped into the Western from other genres. This sub-genre, while largely a post-1990 phenomenon, traces it roots to much deeper hybrid traditions of Westerns and horror or science fiction, and yet, also shows ties to the recent Western renaissance.

This volume, a companion to our forthcoming Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier, will focus on the blending of the Western genre and the undead in media other than film: comics, graphic novels, gaming, new media, and literature. Scholarly explorations of material culture and fandom will also be considered.

Some questions to consider:

- What happens when traditional frontier figures, settings, symbols, and ideologies encounter these characters that defy the laws of nature? - How are Western archetypes subverted or accentuated when confronted by the undead? - How do zombies, vampires, and the like, affect our understandings and interpretations of the West, and vice-versa? Might these hybrid Westerns function as the new anti-Western, or do the undead facilitate a return to tradition? - In what ways do undead Westerns consciously use the undead elements of the plot to comment on the nature of traditional Western heroes and villains? - In what ways do these genre mash-ups revitalize the Western for a new generation of audiences and fans?